He hurt everywhere.

Not in a physical sense; he was long since passed the point of his life, of his career, where he noticed most minor aches and pains. This was… mental? Emotional? Both? Some molten alloy of each, he figured, and it smarted something mighty.

In perfect hindsight, it wasn't any of his business. Really, it wasn't. You didn't stick your face into one's business of former lovers and old family fights without being explicitly invited first, especially if it involved old incidents that happened prior to even knowing that the parties in question ever existed.

Rude.

On the other side… how dare he. Swear to his Maker, Avalanche heard that in his mother's voice, too. Pinecone was here now, one of them now, and the itching, caustic, defensive rage-hate that he usually swallowed when his teammates were affronted by the less-than-friendly stirred as viciously for her as it did for Dynamite or Blackout or anyone else who stumped out most of a year with him. So when this entitled slag-sucker slithered up out of whatever foul hellhole he'd been lurking in—

Deep breath. In, cycle it, back out. Blade's icy, death-by-frigid-rebuke lecture still smarted, but it didn't do much to cool his core.

He just…needed a moment. Several moments.

He hadn't thought anything of the big blue dually truck who had ambled up their entry road in the afternoon, easy smile and fidgeting in a way that might be nervousness, and had asked for Pinecone by name. Her actual name, and not the one she had earned here, and tended to introduce herself to park staff with. Dynamite must have not felt the seeping maliciousness either, since she didn't turn him around and send him right back down the way he came (which meant that the layers of false kindness were awful thick, since his captain had a good nose for BS).

Pinecone was quick with information about her family back home, but tight-lipped about what she actually did before coming out to PPAA, even with the friendly needling they gave her. They had stopped, eventually, when it became obvious she didn't want to talk about it. They got it; there was Something There, and while they stopped poking blindly with a stick, they kept an eye on it, gentle, greedy gossips that they were.

Maybe that was how he skated in under the radar; if Pinecone had friends, people who cared about her enough to make a long trip out to the wilderness, they were not only going to allow it to happen, they would foster it (even if they had to hide it from Blade… let's not be kidding, especially if they had to hide it from Blade; Avalanche was under no illusion that sneaking in Pinecone's boyfriend successfully would be the greatest Houdin-It they had ever pulled off, which would make them want to). Whatever she was running from, they wanted her to be happy.

Turns out, he was what she was running from, and he made her quite the opposite of happy. Pinecone didn't have a "Hate" threshold like the rest of them. At least, he thought she hadn't, but there was so much of it laced into that quiet, "what are you doing here?" that it had pulled Avalanche painfully by the core and spun him around on his treads before he even knew what was happening. And if that giant blue scrapbanger noticed, he sure didn't care.

Avalanche was mentally quite aware that he refused to acknowledge that the truck had an actual, real name that was not an amalgamation of cursing. He was also going to refuse to address it. There were quite a few words beginning with the letter "c" that he could think of to use instead of his name; most of them made him feel his mother's glare from clear across the country.

He sighed. Where had any of that forethought been just a couple hours ago? The hindsight was enlightening, at the very least, as he could remember feeling each piece of his self-control as it flew away as he sat at Pinecone's back tires, his throat long since unable to do anything other growl.

And then the truck had buried his ramguard in Avalanche's blade and pushed, and he had stopped being able to hear, had stopped being able to think in any way other than the self-feeding cycle that was shredding his patience like a saw through wet Kleenex, had stopped being able to see other than what was directly in front of his blade. Dynamite was yelling, so was Blade, but it washed right over him as he attempted to grapple with something churning and acidic and hot that was starting to bubble up from somewhere in him.

Deep breath. In, cycle it, back out.

Almost.

He almost brought some clarity back to his world, and then his blade was pushed again, harder this time, and the strange, throwback, bullish portion of his mind that he had been pretty sure he had tamed in his twenties—a damned decade ago—came roaring out of the recesses of his mind. His blade was pushed, and he was going to push back.

Dynamite's ability to read all her teammates almost saved him, but her "Avalanche, don't" rubbed immediately against his stubborn, recalcitrant streak that decided fuckin' right then to come out of hiding too, and for just a minute, a few seconds even, he was going to be deliberately contrary.

His hindsight told him that turning "no" into "go" just to be a little spiteful was an incredibly foolish, unprofessional thing to do, and far beneath his character.

At the moment it happened though, when he just stopped containing himself, it felt like a blistering, burning relief.

Dually scumsucker was light. Like, he wasn't, but he certainly wasn't an earthmover, and with the most bitter form of adrenalin pounding hotly through his ears his flailing felt like nothing. Something dark that rumbled down in Avalanche's soul took incredible pleasure in feeling the truck's tires give ground when he advanced, all six wheels doing exactly nothing to halt both tread belts that were thrown into their highest gear. Like the pride he felt when he matched his power to Blackout or Drip, but much blacker and greasier.

Thrilling, though.

The sudden jolt when he backed the truck against the tree surprised even him, but hardly enough to distract him from maintaining the pin. Quite the opposite; the dark thing in him bucked hard, especially as the truck's tires started throwing clouds of dirt into the air in an effort to free himself.

Avalanche just leaned into it. Let's see him free himself once he was wrapped around this tree trunk—

Something grabbed one of his lift arms. Like, really grabbed it. A metal winch hook, on a hoist line. He managed to see it through the rage-haze, but it didn't really register until he heard a second one hit the ground.

Blade's hoist hooks were not this big. His lines were not this thick. And he sure as hell didn't have two of them.

The tension on the line tightened significantly, even if Windlifter's face did not change one slight degree from his placid normal. Faced with the sudden, stark contrast of how the big chopper looked and how Avalanche felt wiped away a good chunk of his tunnel vision.

Blade was still yelling. So was Dynamite. Now that he was willing to hear it, they were yelling at him. Windlifter was as silent as ever, but that message he heard louder than anything.

The first hook was Avalanche's check.

The second, still lying heavily on the ground, was his warning.

Blade was physically not able to get Avalanche to budge an inch; he didn't have to be, when his lieutenant was capable of moving every vehicle on this base whose name was not Cabbie. That thought alone pierced the baser, currently-active portions of his brain better than anything else. Which, looking back on it, was distinctly embarrassing in its own right.

Bits and pieces of most other events were a mushy blur. Avalanche must have let go, because not only did the blue dually leave without serious body damage, but the hook on Avalanche's lift arm disappeared as swiftly as it came. With the drama gone, most of the rest of the team dispersed.

The one event that Avalanche remembered with absolute perfect clarity was the subsequent reaming that he got from Blade and Dynamite. He hadn't taken a ripping like that since long before he came to PPAA, not even from either of the two parties in question. He'd seen it happen to one other person, one of the last people to inhabit this base who also had a lurking temper.

It hadn't been any fun watching it happen to Lucas.

It was infinitely less fun having it happen to himself.

The disappointment was probably the worst of it. It didn't hurt any more or less that they were right—of course they were, and his bruised pride could handle acknowledging that—but that they expecting him to just... be better stung the most. Blade dismissed him without an immediate punishment, which meant that at chore allotment the next day he was liable to get what was really coming to him. Chores didn't frighten him; paperwork that required a supervisor's signature did.

Deep breath. In, cycle it, back out.

The back of the main hangar afforded him the quiet space needed to corral his… everything. He'd been here for what felt like an hour already, trying to stuff some part of his psyche back into himself and forget about it, to very little avail. His temper still simmered around under his plating, but without a target it just sat uncomfortably in his core.

Was the target meant to be himself?

Couldn't be, he was doing a pretty good job of that already.

"Boy, your hiding spot doesn't mean slag when everyone rolling by can hear you hissing back here."

Cabbie's sharp rumble almost made him jump. A quick glance to the side showed just the dark, almost-ominous shadow lurking at the end of the building, considering that was the only part of Cabbie able to fit between the hangar and the thick stand of trees.

And Avalanche knew how cantankerous he was feeling when he could not be remotely tempted to poke Cabbie's patience with an "I knew you were a Shadow" joke.

The feeling was clearly mutual, as Cabbie snorted roughly before sending his growl around the back of the hangar again.

"Come on, move your aft. I am not about to have this conversation while face-first into a bush."

Avalanche didn't want to have this conversation at all.

"DID BLADE SEND YOU?"

"Blade doesn't send proxies for lectures," came a somewhat irritated grunt, "now start rolling."

So Cabbie had taken this on by himself; Avalanche wasn't sure if that made him more or less relieved. Cabbie didn't get salty very often, but when he did, just about everyone got clear.

And Avalanche couldn't look at that mental reflection for very long without getting uncomfortable.

Cabbie had about a hundred yard head start by the time he finally emerged from behind the hangar, headed for the other side of the base. He followed behind at a pace brisk enough to be purposeful, but slow enough to hopefully conceal exactly how exposed he felt out in the open. Maru didn't remark about anything as he passed the front of his building. Neither did Windlifter, doing a pretty good job of Not Actually Napping on top of his lift. Everyone else was either out, or in, as mood dictated, leaving the base incredibly quiet. This alone ratcheted his self-consciousness straight to eleven, since nothing about him was quiet.

The big warbird stayed silent through the entire trip towards his hangar, ending up out the back of his camo netting and partway into the small field behind his space. Avalanche swallowed a sigh. At the very least, that would put him about as far from anyone else on base as he was able to get without jumping off the airstrip. He took a place out past the tip of Cabbie's starboard wing; he didn't particularly feel like being close to someone who was likely to give him his second chewing out of the day.

Cabbie didn't give him very long to sit with the idea, which was actually a blessing.

"I'm going to start with the gross parts first, and I'll keep it short since I'm pretty sure you've gotten about all the punishing lecture you can take from Dynamite and Blade." Cabbie gave him a sideways look out of one grey eye that made it exceedingly difficult to meet his gaze. No anger, just… that disappointment, which was much worse. "That was stupid. That was a stupid thing to do, and beneath your character. All the more irritating because you are not an idiot. Don't misunderstand, I think at least half the people on that tarmac were angry, most of all Blade if you completely disregard Pinecone. At the very least, nobody was comfortable." Cabbie gave a soft half-snort through his vents. "But what you did has ramifications that could come back to bite everyone here very, very hard. Blade and Dynamite are rightfully wary of litigation." The second snort was much less that, and closer to a sigh. "You are never going to tell either of them that I told you, but Blade and Dynamite are now twice as worried; never mind Pinecone, who I guarantee everyone on base is keeping an eye on for the next few days, but now they also have to worry about you."

"M'FINE."

Cabbie gave him half a scowl.

"No, you're not, but we'll leave that for a moment. What I meant is that they don't want to lose you, and if you get an assault charge leveled against you, there is almost nothing either one of them can do to protect you. Of the two of them, I am one hundred percent sure that Dynamite takes that fact the worst." He let that settle in for a moment before continuing. "Everyone up here does this line of work because they have no problems with throwing their own plating in the line of fire for others. All your teammates are 'defenders'; Blade, Dipper, Windlifter. Myself. All you grimy mudrunners. You, particularly. All that to say that if someone wanted to remove you from this base, they would have to do so over Dynamite's dead, cold body. Your position here is yours, hopefully until you willingly relinquish it." He gave Avalanche another side-eye. "Nobody wants to have to replace you."

Well.

He wasn't sure which stung worse, now; the disappointment was bad, but having his teammates worry about him had always left a sour taste in his mouth. Given his already tumultuous mood, it was awful bitter right now.

"THEY… DON'T NEED TO DO THAT."

"There are a lot of things that are done on this base that people don't need to do, and yet we do it anyways." Cabbie's look softened and hardened at the same time, and Avalanche wasn't even close to sure how he managed to pull that off. "With that in mind, we can move on to the part of this conversation that starts with 'what the hell happened out there'?"

"I DON'T KNOW."

"The hell you don't."

"I DON'T KNOW!" Avalanche could feel himself gritting his teeth, and it took a force of will to relax his jaw back out. "I JUST…"

Trying to sort through his exact line of thought was like watching water swirl slowly down a drain. It began slowly and then just quickened the pace until everything collapsed into itself.

He'd been mad. Truck had been an aftdragger. And then he'd been blade first into the truck.

The end.

But he could tell that Cabbie was not going to accept that exact explanation at all, so he had to actually attempt to parse himself out. Not easy, considering that reliving it made his irritability well back up, and Not Thinking Through the Haze had been his whole issue today. If Cabbie noticed the erratically swinging RPMs of his engine, he didn't comment on it.

Deep breath. In, cycle it, back out.

Maybe he should try thinking out loud, because keeping it to himself until properly formed was clearly a no-go.

"IT'S LIKE… EVERYTHING HE DID JUST PUSHED EVERY BUTTON I HAVE." Vague, but true; there had been a point there, just before the chaotic collapse, that the big dually could have one-eightied into apologizing profusely and Avalanche would have still seen his anger mounting. He was aware that, for better or worse, he took his teammates' judgments of people at face value. If one said, "that guy is a douchecanoe," then he was highly liable to believe it and react (in)appropriately until proven otherwise. All that meaning that this guy had not only started a couple rungs behind once Pinecone had made her opinion of him expressly clear, but everything he did or said after that simultaneously affirmed that assessment, and put another nail in the proverbial coffin. "NOT JUST PUSHED; MASHED AS HARD AS POSSIBLE."

"This can't have been the first time you've run up against a complete scumbag."

"NO, BUT…" It was the first time in a long time one had been quite that in-his-face about it, and rubbed so hard against everything Avalanche deemed as appropriate behavior towards someone else that for a moment he was simply struck dumb attempting to sort through the pile of What The Fuck.

And towards Pinecone, who was in the running with Patch and Windlifter for Most Gentle, Calm Team Member Who Will Never Steer You Wrong (Windlifter was several points behind for some water and glitter incidents, but top three wasn't bad placement). Avalanche knew he had a few hard-to-smother white knight reflexes that he found quite difficult to ignore, and that those were liable to ratchet straight up to thirteen when family was involved. And proper frame type or not, everyone at PPAA was family.

And then this aftwrench came in and—

"I WAS GOING TO WRAP HIM AROUND THAT TREE, CABBIE."

The short, almost-dismissive rumble he got in return told him what Cabbie thought of that.

"No, you were not."

"YES, I WAS."

And Cabbie turned enough to give him a hard stare.

"No,you were not. Could you have? Yes. Would you have? Definitely not." Cabbie's stare took on an appraising tinge that was no less piercing. "Unless there is something about you that you've managed to hide from the rest of us for years. I doubt it, but I've been wrong before."

Avalanche could feel his temper rising again. He was there, he knew what he could have done. Techincally, everyone on base was there, but Avalanche was the only one inside his own head to see the walls of his tunnel vision closing in before it was reduced to nothing but the top of his blade and the struts of the ramguard he was going to bury in the ground.

"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND. I WAS SO MAD—"

"How many fights have you been in?" And Cabbie's stare turned into a glare so quickly that world slowed down and Avalanche almost literally choked on his words. He let them die quietly in the back of his throat instead, since Cabbie had reached that threshold that all elder members of the crew had where they stopped allowing interruptions. "And don't give me some scrap number either. An honest count. Real knock down, drag-out out fights."

Like… all of them? And whoadang, that was an enlightening and embarrassing thought to have. It included all the stuff about himself that he never really wanted to unpack. Pinned under Cabbie's searing attention, though, he figured now was as good a time as any to dig up some of his old dirt. Had to reach way back for this one.

"SOMEWHERE AROUND A DOZEN." College was exciting. And tumultuous.

"Hmph, more than most." And then the glare hardened sharply, taking on an icy tinge to the edges that Avalanche had not yet ever associated with the old warbird, and frankly never wanted to. "Now, how about that kill count?"

Huh!?

"WHAT!?"

There was something dancing at the edges of Cabbie's glare that made Avalanche's temper look like a flickering candle. Just looking at it made him feel like he didn't have any armor whatsoever.

"You heard me just fine. What is your kill count?" Cabbie's voice was a low hiss through set teeth, and Avalanche was glad he was just outside of reach, if not lunging distance.

He did not like wherever this was headed. He could guess, but it wasn't something Cabbie ever gave the impression of wanting to talk about, and Avalanche could say for certain that he did not want to be the first person to stick his face in this.

"I MEAN… ZERO?"

The glare didn't waver one iota.

"That's what I thought. You think you were mad enough to kill him? Really? You weren't. Not in the slightest. You do not have it in you." And in just a couple moments more, the icy razors of Cabbie's ire dissipated almost completely. He looked tired. He looked relieved. "And thank the Maker for that."

Avalanche was looking for his brain to pick one emotional representative this afternoon, because feeling everything at once was exhausting. They all knew Cabbie had scars none of the rest of them could see; he had imagined that they would discover them only when the warbird let slip one piece of information or another and then they connected the dots. This was… much more up-front than he could have possibly anticipated. This resulted in several moods receding, only to allow others to take their place. Upside, his temper ebbed. Downside, everything else came flooding in to fill the rather large void.

Also, "you don't have it in you" were six words that rubbed up against the rougher, earthmover portions of his brain and left him with a reflexive urge to rise to the challenge that he put down as swiftly as possible.

Cabbie was quiet for a while, even if Avalanche could see his mind moving a mile a minute. He was still deciding how best to respond to… all of that, and he didn't feel like disrupting the silence for half-formed thoughts. Eventually the old carrier spared him from having to, heralded only by a quiet sigh.

"Look here. Nothing I said was meant derisively. Your world moves when you kill someone. Even if you hate them. Even if it is to save your own life, or someone you care about. Especially if it is up close and personal, the way you fight. Something in you shifts when it happens, and no amount of soldering and repaints can ever repair it. Not fully." Cabbie regarded him with an odd mix of looks that he wasn't quite sure what to make of. The relief was still palpable, though. "I carry enough ghosts with me to fill whatever quota Hell has for everyone here. Trust me; you don't want any piece of it."

No, he didn't. He would like to keep himself away from whatever life experience Cabbie had that let him pull up his own dark shadows that gave him a frozen edge that would give Blade a solid run for his money. "Whatever" being mental shorthand for multiple deployments overseas across two separate wars, never mind whatever else he was witness to over the course of his long life. He'd been present when several of those photos went up on the Wall.

All the respect in the word. Also sad, holy hell. In an effort to not follow that line of thought to where it inevitably led, Avalanche figured he'd give the big plane an emotional "out."

"IS THIS YOUR USUAL PEP-TALK? BECAUSE YOU ARE GARBAGE AT IT."

"Now listen here, you little brute," and the accompanying growl carried absolutely no heat whatsoever; Cabbie was gonna take his out and run with it, "I don't play fast and loose with my personal life, so when I give you advice you are going to sit there and take it. Especially since it looks like you will be on punishment detail until you are my age."

"IF I'M LUCKY."

"Heh. You'll be fine." Despite his earlier warning, he seemed pretty sure of this. "So will Pinecone."

There was that, too. His problems were many-fold, but still small beans compared to hers.

"ON A SCALE OF 'HELLO FRIEND' TO 'GO FUCK YOURSELF,' HOW MAD AT ME DO YOU THINK SHE IS?"

Cabbie's propellers rotated a slow turn as a form of half-shrug.

"Hard to say. She's been scarce since this afternoon. And I suspect it is a lot more complicated than just being mad at you, considering. I do not imagine it lasting."

That didn't really make him feel any better.

"WASN'T MY BUSINESS." Avalanche hoped that if his brain acknowledged it enough, his emotions would finally start to believe it.

Cabbie gave him an airy chuff.

"In that case, neither was any one of the incidents where people thought they could run up on Dynamite just because she's a UTV on an earthmover team. Or any time mutual aid thought they were going to say something snide behind Blade's tail. Or whatever gets said to send all you little dustmunchers into some kind of wrathful frenzy to defend my honor." And Cabbie sent him a knowing look; Avalanche smothered a cheeky smirk, but only barely. "Directly, no, it wasn't your business. But that hasn't stopped anyone here from blowing up an individual problem into a team event. With good intentions, of course."

True. Upset team members brought out inner Den-Mothers and Team Dads in equal measure around here, in a myriad of attempts to cheer someone up. Some more quietly than others. Or not; when he was feeling up to it, Maru could be both personalities simultaneously, which was impressive and terrifying to watch.

"STILL…"

"From this point on it's just opinion and conjecture, and perhaps projecting onto you, but I think this problem specifically is that you haven't seen Pinecone bite back before. Neither Dynamite nor Blade require any assistance in defending their own pride; Dynamite because… we'll, we know why, and Blade because he could not give an ice-cold scrap about someone's opinion of him." True, on both accounts; any team bristling that occurred was less because the accosted was incapable of defending themselves, and more because an insult at one was taken as a personal insult at many. "Pinecone is too new to have had to prove her worth to anyone but us, and we know exactly what her worth is. She's never had to fight for it, and you've never been the type to let an insult thrown anywhere in your general vicinity slide. Which is both noble and stupid at the same time."

"I DON'T THINK I'D HAVE HAD THE WILL POWER TO JUST SIT THERE AND LET HIM…" and Avalanche made a strange, vague gesture with his blade that perfectly characterized his own irritated confusion.

"You should have. This whole incident would have gone down entirely differently if you had just let him flail uselessly. He was not going to be able to move you, under any circumstance, and that would probably have injured his ego even more if not only was he unable to pick a fight, he was one hundred percent powerless you get you to budge an inch. Would have been damned funny for the rest of us, too. I know Maru would have had some biting response already holstered just for that."

"I MEAN…" That would have been rather effective, wouldn't it? Would have fed the seething part of his ego, too, watching that idiot attempt to bully his way around the base to no avail. Just let him exhaust and embarrass himself doing that. And without the scalding reprimand that came with pushing back. Yeah, that would have been way better. "WELL, SCRAP."

Cabbie chuckled softly; he knew when he was right.

"If you're so eager to be your teammates' shield, then do that next time. Not that I'm ever hoping there will be a 'next time' to this nonsense. But your strength is that you are immovable, in just about every imaginable way. An absolute pain in the aft when you're feeling stubborn. Utterly delightful when put to the good of others."

Avalanche felt now was a terrible time for a contemporary video game joke that the warbird would most certainly not get.

But it was true. It was a personal mantra he had already taken to heart while out on the line; it wouldn't be hard to adhere to it elsewhere.

Well. This whole thing went better than he had hoped. Cabbie had still given him a bit of a ripping, but quite frankly he deserved that. Still smarted less than Blade's, too. He was done with all of today, though. The hour or so still to go before dinner was gonna be a long one.

"I'M TIRED."

"Me too." Cabbie let out a surprised grunt. "I actually want a drink."

Oh, dear sweet Chrysler, yes.

"ME TOO. I REFUSE TO TEMPT BLADE'S TEMPER A SECOND TIME THIS WEEK, THOUGH."

Cabbie cocked a brow.

"Just this week?"

"I CAN GUARENTEE MY INCLINATION FOR SELF-PRESERVATION LASTS AT LEAST THAT LONG."

"I would at least wait until this punishment detail wears off, so that you are not carrying two of them."

"SO… WHEN I'M EIGHTY, THEN?"

Cabbie smirked, and waggled a wingtip threateningly at him. Avalanche gave a couple inches of ground to keep his canopy clear of the swing.

"Get out, you cheeky brat. You clearly don't need my garbage pep-talk anymore."

"IT ENDED UP BEING NOT THAT BAD."

"The words you are looking for are 'thank you.'"

Not quite. Like, they were, but he needed something a little more contrite. A lot more contrite.

"NO, THE WORDS I'M LOOKING FOR ARE 'I'M SORRY.'"

Cabbie let out a long sigh that was almost dramatic.

"This had almost ended on a somewhat high note, and you ruined it." He leveled a look at him. "Besides, I don't think those are meant for me."

"THEY ARE. YOU, AND EVERYONE ELSE."

"Hmph, I'm fine, but there are three people on that list who should hear them. All things considered, Blade is last. I don't think I need to tell you who is first."

"NO."

He certainly did not. Avalanche hadn't yet worked out if he should seek Pinecone out or let her find him once she was ready to talk to people. Maybe a combination of both; once she no longer felt like being alone, the ball would be in his court. That was fine; while he wasn't in a rush, he was eager to smooth as much of this over as was possible. He didn't like to keep feuds with family.

And by birth or by burn, they were all family.

AN:

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes!

So writing my thesis absolutely murdered my ability to write creatively. I am trying to get back into it, especially because all these people out at Piston Peak make me happy. I don't know if I'll ever make it back up to the point where I was able to crank out a chapter a month (2014 -2015 were some good years, peeps), but I would like to keep these muses active, as long as they cooperate. And my other muses don't mooch my momentum.

This whole chapter is a gift to ObsidianJade, who has been politely asking for this exact interaction for *coughyearscough*; I hope this satisfies. She is also the person to just idly toss the genius "by birth or by burn" line out there during a chat, and has allowed me to steal it. Pure genius.

Avalanche is still my favorite smokejumper, even if he sometimes just needs a good knock to the noggin.

You all know what's up; I'm sure the second half of this specifically is so full of typos as to be borderline embarrassing, but I gotta sleep before my eyes fall out. I'll do the purge tomorrow. XD